to be annoyed at this or is this normal ?

[pindywop]

I was at local parade of shops yesterday with ds(6). ds started saying he was bursting for a wee. There are no public toilets near local parade of shops so I went into a restaurant (which was completely empty apart from 2 staff behind the bar) and asked politely if ds could quickly use the toilet as he was desperate.

They said no - the toilet is for customers only.

Was IBU to be really annoyed at the petty unhelpful jobsworths or were they being perfectly reasonable.

its normal around here. i get the same with dd1. the shops that know us are really kind and let her use the staff toilet but cafes/hotels etc can be really arsey about it. they clearly have never looked after a small child with a full bladder.

YANBU

misi I think it's only in certain areas that they have opened toilets on premises up to the public. I saw it on the news the other day they are thinking of trying it in some more areas. The pubs etc get paid by the council to let the general public in.

I thought they only had to let you use the toilet if you were pregnant? Or is that the glass of water thing.

We need to get more public toilets in the UK, however I know you are not going to want to hear this but sometimes it puts the person in the shop/cafe in a very difficult position. If the person is on their own or just two manning the shop they will have to leave the till and escort the parent and child to the loo. They will have been told under no circumstances to go in to the loo but that they cannot leave you and the child in that non-public area of the building alone. This will leave no one or one person on the till. It is something to do with insurance and adhering to child protection guidelines. A lot of it is to do with red tape rather than stropy shop workers and managers.

I don't know then, I am only going by the reams of paper I got through for ,y shop a couple of years ago, saying that if I had public toilets I had to open them for non patronage use by a certain date or that I had to fill in the forms for an exemption. I suppose I got the papers as I was classed as a food shop but they didn't know if it were for on site consumption, but then they should have as the zoning is different. the bit about insurance is definaetly correst at time of 'printing' but there was certainly no mention of payment or business rate reduction for allowing use of toilets.

it is a fine balance whatever between staff welfare and customer welfare. I only had one time when someone I let use the loo that I regretted. she had 2 kids with her both desperate for the loo, so I took her up to the loo (which was next to the private kitchen) and 20 mins later she emerged. helped her down with the kids and her bags, only to find out after she went that the new pack of 4 loo rolls had gone, the bottle of bleach had gone as had all the sanitary towel bags, a box of baby wipes and even the liquid soap dispenser on the sink. and to top it all off, one of them even peed in the corner rather than in the toilet. Until it was cleaned up and replenished, I could not in theory let my staff use the toilet or kitchen as it was against employment and health rules. the funniest most embarrassing time was when a pregnant lady was stuck in the loo. she unlocked the door and had covered herself with one of the towels. she wasn't stuck to the loo, she was just unable to stand up . until my ex came back from one of her walkarounds around town, I made the lady a cup of tea with a biscuit. the next day we heard she had gone into labour and a 10lbs 3oz boy was born.

Don't boycott them, keep going back. Order the cheapest things on the menu, stay a really long time and make a real mess. And lots of noise!

Ive had this before and i have also had a shop allow dd into the basement so that she can use the staff toilet despite no insurance so it depends on the shop owner i guess.

I have been told also that it is illegal for shopkeepers to refuse but as I have a medical condition I have a card that tells them they cant refuse me lol

I'd be interested to know more about the card you carry believeintheboogie as no one not even a shop keeper is required to allow anyone to use their private toilets if that is all they have in store, and certainly no insurance policy I have had for public liability would allow it, all I have had specifically demand that no public are allowed into private areas of the shop or the insurance becomes invalid and you can actually be prosecuted under health and safety regs if you allow the public into private areas of the shop

its just a small laminated card , will try and find it and read what it actually says but its something along the lines of the holder for medical reasons urgently needs to use toilet facilites not sure what else it says will check, I have used it after being refused and not had issues. saying that I have a radar key so its not often a problem.

Totally YANBU. I've been in this situation before, and have only once ever been refused the use of a toilet. And that was in ELC!

oh i stand corrected I just checked and there is no legal term on it but I have never been refused with it, just says

Urgent, the holder of this card has a medical condition and needs to use a toilet quickly.

The idea is that should you need to use a toilet urgently, then showing this to people working in shops or elsewhere, will enable you to use their toilet facilities.

The company I used to work for it was company policy to never refuse anyone who was not elderly, a child, pregnant or disabled.

I think they were mean.

yes, some companies can afford the massive hike in insurance costs to cover such things like this, but a shop like mine, my insurance cost could have more then trebled for one of these all encompassing policies, and to make sure everything was 'legal' it could have cost thousands to make sure the toilet came up to public liability safety standards etc, and the other thing is if you do go down this route, you have to consider access for disabled too, some premises will be exempt due to age, layout and status (my shop was a grade 2 listed building but had grade 2 listed internal features too which would make diasable access up stairs impossible) but if you are deemed ok, you HAVE to provide equal facilities for disabled too, costing yet more thousands cos of the safety regs.
personally I would never refuse use of facilities unless there were exceptional circumstances. you have to have laws etc to protect people but health and safety and PC has gone to far, to a point where any shop owner risks his business if he wants to provide common decency and common sense to his customers and spare a thought for smaller shop owners if they refuse, cos if they knowingly invalidate their insurance by allowing customers into private areas, they can be prosecuted for having no valid insurance!!

Would have been funny (to me) if your DS had weed on their floor.

lynettescavo my dd once did and i was mortified. She had been dry about a year and we stopped in a supermarket cafe to get a coffee after shopping and she never said anything and just stood and weed, she was only 3 but I apologised profuseley (sp?) and offered to clean it up myself. cafe manager ( a mum) said not to worry and asked a cleaner to get a mop and bucket. Said cleaner didnt realise it was my dd who had weed and said to her collegue "some dirty bitch has pissed on the floor"
needless to say I was fuming.

Sorry that was a bit off topic then.
Misi I understand where your coming from as well, sadly this political correctness and claim culture has made it ridiculas.

Could you have become a customer? Ordered a quick cup of coffee or a juice for your ds and said that you would be staying but that you needed to use the loo otherwise they would have had a big puddle in the restaurant... that way they would have got a little bit of custom and you would have got to use their facilities and everybody would have been happy.

I thought we were talking about restaurants pubs cafes etc where they have toilets for customers and are insured. For them to refuse when someone asks is out of order I think.

It's a different story where the toilets are for staff only - it wouldn't occur to me to ask to use the toilet where there weren't ones for the public - in a shoe shop for example - I would go and find a pub or cafe.

misi the thing I saw on the telly was only about pubs restaurants etc opening their toilets to the public not other sorts of shops. It was on London Tonight - one borough was doing it and others were considering it - and was about a month ago. It obviously really differs around the place.